Page:Excavations at the Kesslerloch.djvu/64

Rh primitive tools; in fact, it seems almost impossible. But we have similar phenomena in other quarters: there are in fact whole peoples, as well as individual men, who in certain departments of human science and knowledge have made great advances above others for centuries, nay even for thousands of years. Are not the Greeks by their former skill in the plastic arts and poetry a pattern to us even at the present day? Just so we may consider that our prehistoric artist has in his department so far surpassed his compeers, the cave-dwellers of Périgord and Dordogne, that neither their ancestors nor their successors were able to execute such art productions with flints. The reindeer as it steps forward grazing brings in fact before the imagination a peaceful image; so that our artist can hardly have been a savage rough hunter, whose great enjoyment was in wild romantic hunting scenes. The general bearing of this reindeer stepping forwards, and that of the horse already mentioned, may possibly indicate that the idea of thus representing animals sprang from the same brain, and perhaps we may have to attribute to one artist the drawings of the horse and the reindeer.

The same claim to artistic skill may be made by the drawings of the horse represented, Plate XII. fig. 70, and Plate XI. fig. 68. Here the figure of a horse is drawn on a piece of reindeer-horn about 9 inches long and 1$1⁄5$ of an inch thick, which is perforated at the end. The fine outlines and shading work appear as sharply cut as if they had been engraved but yesterday. Unfortunately the horn was carelessly broken in two when dug up; by good chance, however, the drawing has suffered but little. As the artist, on account of the limited space, could not quite place the drawing on the upper side of the horn, the hoofs have come on the under side, and thus lose somewhat of their significance. The parallel striæ on the neck, the breast, the back, the body, and the hinder part of the animal undoubtedly represent hairs. The well-formed head—rather long, with small ears—the upright mane, the graceful, well-formed body, the elegant and lightly-formed feet, and especially the remarkably thin tail, reaching nearly to the ground, represent without doubt a young well-bred animal. And here again the horse is drawn stepping forwards. One might have been tempted to have considered this drawing as the representation of a cross between the horse and the ass, but the horses' bones found in the cave show that